Terry Richard/The OregonianRafters pause to check out the cabin once owned by Western author Zane Grey on the Rogue River. The BLM is acquiring ownership.

Seven riverside lodges make a float trip on the Rogue River unique in Oregon (click for the BLM site). After a day of getting soaked in rapids and dodging hailstones from afternoon thunderstorms, there's nothing like a hot shower and a warm bed to crawl into at the end of the day.

Idaho's Salmon River is the only other river in the West where boaters can travel downriver and stay at a different lodge each night.

The first lodge, critical when booking a lodge trip on the Rogue, is Black Bar Lodge, which was built in 1934. The trail is on river right (the north bank), where most of the other lodges are, so hikers will need to arrange for the lodge to pick them up by boat and take them across the river.

I've stayed here on three different Rogue River trips (click for the national forest site) and there's nothing like a warm shower after a cold spring day on the river. The 40 miles of river between Almeda Bar near Merlin to Foster Bar near Agness has more numerous lodges on the lower river, so when one is full, another may have space.

After a dinner featuring pork chops and wild rice, guests socialize until 10 p.m., when the diesel power generator shut off and the lights went out.

The second day on the wild section of the Rogue has no signature rapids, although numerous riffles make time pass quickly. The lunch spot was shared by a bald eagle plucking a fish. The eagle showed amazing patience, as rafters circled in for a close look, before it flew across the river.

Marial Lodge, which began as a homestead in the 1930s, is the second lodge in the Rogue's wild section and sits just above the river's most exciting section. Rafters dine on fried chicken and pasta, knowing it would help them accomplish the rugged work they faced the next day.

Mule Creek Canyon, a mile of swirling, unpredictable water, lies just below Marial Lodge. Blossom Bar, the Rogue River's best-known rapids, lies just below Mule Creek Canyon. Commercial jet boats that venture upriver from Gold Beach stop just below Blossom Bar, where passengers wait to see the rafters who fail to make the right moves.

Accessible by jet boats, lodges become more common below Blossom Bar. Paradise, Half Moon Bar, Clay Hill, Wild River and Illahe lodges serve rafters and fishermen between Blossom Bar and the takeout at Foster Bar. We spent our third night at Half Moon Bar Lodge, where a spirited game of horseshoes failed to scare away the resident herd of a dozen black-tailed deer. Barbecued chinook salmon fed the hungry crowd.

The last day on the river is on wide, placid water, with no noteworthy rapids. It leaves plenty of time to watch for wildlife, including a black bear cub foraging for food along the bank.

The takeout is always a flurry of activity because, somehow, all 160 boaters allowed on the river each day seem to arrive at once. Gear is broken down and passengers pile aboard shuttle vans for the ride back across the mountains to the starting point.

Backpackers can also follow the river on the Rogue River Trail, but to stay in lodges they will need to make arrangements to be ferried across the river to Black Bar Lodge.